


How Do You Know the Rose?

by Crankygrrl



Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator - All Media Types, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 07:03:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10566105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crankygrrl/pseuds/Crankygrrl
Summary: No one asked the rose if it wanted to be known by any other name.





	

Kate no longer remembers the last time someone called her by her own name. 

Intellectually, she knows it was before Judgement Day. Logically, she knows that when she answered the phone that last morning, she would have called herself "Doctor Brewster". But it's the pride in her shiny new title warming her deep in her belly that she remembers not the name she used. Then the bombs fell and for all intents and purposes, Kate Brewster died in the nuclear fire.

They called woman who emerged from Crystal Mountain Kate Connor.

She wasn't his wife – Kate Brewster and John Connor never married. If a ceremony had been possible then - if he'd asked - Kate would have said no, not when she still looked for her fiancee's face in every group of refugees; not while John searched for faces of his own. By the time they stopped looking after shadows, they had been together so long it no longer mattered: Kate was bound to John by ties of blood and tears, sacrifice and loss stronger than any oath taken before a negligent God could ever be.

Then there were the advantages to being Kate Connor, advantages beyond the authority the name carried. Kate Connor never lost her parents and her fiancee on Judgement Day. Kate Connor never lay down to die on a dusty bunk in an empty barracks rather than face the death of her world, never cried for lost dreams or the children she would never have, never raged at being the one left behind, never fucked a man she didn't even like out of loneliness and need and terror that she might be left behind again.

Kate Connor was fearless, Kate Connor was John's beloved wife, Kate Connor kicked metal ass with a shotgun in one hand and a scalpel in the other bearing their children – unexpected and unhoped for – along the way. Kate Connor was a hero, a leader, the third leg of John Connor's apocalyptic trinity – mother, son and holy healer.

Kate Connor could be stoic when her firstborn died in the cholera epidemic that John liberated along with the survivors of Century Work Camp. Kate Connor could grit her teeth and follow orders when John ordered their surviving son to the front. Kate Connor could swallow her own doubts to defend John when the questions started, as the Resistance dwindled with each seemingly pointless assault, as John locked himself away, his only companions the very machines that had driven their race to the edge of extinction.

Kate Connor could kneel on the concrete between the body of the father of her children and the thing with a stolen face that had murdered him and feel nothing but the weight of the name she wore.

On John's other side, Perry teetered on the edge of panic. If she faltered he would tumble - that was all it would take for everything to fall apart. Kate touched John's hair. Kate Connor didn't flinch.

"No one can know."

"Kate?" 

"Secure the room. No one but us in or out. And get me a chip tech." 

Perry stared. Kate added some doctor's snap to her voice. "General. Now."

Prodded into action, he jerked away from her pieta and made for the door. She watched him close it tight behind him and listened as he called his recon troopers and set the guard.

Kate closed John's eyes. Still warm but his body already felt wrong under her fingers, transformed from something into nothing. He was the last person who'd known her real name. He'd have been the last person to call her Kate Brewster. He must have. 

To her left, the machine waited, the seconds counting down until it lurched back to life. She took a pair of scissors from her field kit to the scalp, tearing through the layer of flesh to expose the alloy underneath. A little leverage popped the CPU cover loose, exposing the chip. Kate pulled it free with a pair of forceps, killing the machine. 

"Don't worry, John." Kate held out the chip to him. "We'll fix it. You and me. We'll fix it all."


End file.
